


We Watched You Fly But Nothing's Free

by last_illusions (injured_eternity)



Series: Fractured Moonlight on the Sea [2]
Category: Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Comic), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: AC/DC - Freeform, Allusions to 1940s Medical Practises, Arc Reactor, Because Tony Stark, Canon Compliant, Character Development, Character Study, Chronic Illness, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Panic Attacks, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-Captain America 3, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Iron Man 3, Post-Thor: The Dark World, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Slash, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, serious conversations, smart!steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2014-07-03
Packaged: 2018-02-07 06:36:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1888665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/injured_eternity/pseuds/last_illusions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Chronically Awesome is not a band,” Tony says when he's stopped laughing enough to speak again, “though now that you mention it, it totally should be."</p><p>"You lost me."</p><p>"No, we found you."</p><p>Steve throws his eraser at him.  "Tony..."</p><p> <br/>In which Dr Doom is still a megalomaniac, Tony confuses Steve with kitchen utensils and tries to eat a sandwich, and Steve begins to think Tony should have gone into undercover work.</p><p>Spoilers for <i>The Avengers</i>, <i>Iron Man 2</i>, and <i>Iron Man 3</i>, along with some vague mentions of the <i>Winter Soldier</i> storyline.  Designed to be read comprehensibly as a standalone, or within the series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Watched You Fly But Nothing's Free

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ethelindi (eventide)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eventide/gifts).



> **Trigger Warnings** : discussions of and/or allusions to PTSD, anxiety, panic attacks, poor health, and terrible medical situations.
> 
> Spoilers only as noted in the summary; all other tags are denoted for timeline purposes. Title from James Blunt's "Miss America".
> 
> In the interest of full disclosure, this has been written by someone with pervasive chronic health issues, though I fully blame ethelindi for the fact that it was actually _written_. Objectively, I find it hard to believe that having a metal cylinder in your chest goes completely unnoticed, and I suddenly started wondering how the heck Tony Stark could receive CPR and whether or not an AED would just electrocute him, which ultimately led to some very bizarre research and this fic.
> 
> The autonomic function comment is part of 616 canon, appearing in [_Fatal Frontier_](http://secretlymutants.tumblr.com/post/78302393376/fatal-frontier-1). [Spoon Theory](http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/wpress/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/) is also a real thing, in case you were curious. See endnotes for canon influences, context, and medical disclaimers.

_10 July 2013_

AC/DC’s “Shoot to Thrill” is blaring from the speakers in the workshop when the elevator doors slide open.  Tony must be in a good mood.  The workshop door is standing open, a rare enough event (especially in the past few months) that Steve has to pause and double-check he’s not about to walk straight into a glass panel like a bird flying into a window—he’d never live that down.

“Hey,” he says over the music, which is for once not so loud he has to shout to be heard.

“Hey, Cap,” Tony calls back without looking up from the soldering iron in his hand.

Sketchbook tucked under one arm, Steve comes all the way into the lab and sets a plate on the fragment of clear space at the edge of the workbench.  There, it at least theoretically won’t end up accidentally doused in noxious chemicals and/or set on fire.

Ever since Pepper (and then JARVIS) had called him after Pepper and Tony had broken up, they’ve ended up spending a lot of sleepless nights catching up on seventy years’ worth of film and books and television with a side of bitching about insomnia, and in the past month or so Steve’s taken to joining him in the workshop.  Just ten days ago they started rebuilding a classic Charger Tony’s been prodding at inconsistently since he acquired it three years ago, but when they’re not tackling the car, it’s just company.  From what pretty much everyone he knows has said, the sole fact that he now has space in the lab that’s mostly “his” is rather significant. He’s not stupid enough to bring it up with Tony, so he’s not sure how much truth there is to that assertion, but mouth, gift horse, etc.

As he crosses the room to the old drafting table that he’d swear he’d seen Howard using in the forties, Tony looks up from his work to the plate, then to Steve, corner of his mouth curling into something like a smile.  “What are you, my mother?”

“Insert whatever answer will actually get you to eat it,” Steve replies glibly, hooking his heel on the base of the stool so it doesn’t slide out from under him.  “What are you working on?” he asks as he flips open the sketchbook to the half-finished charcoal piece he’d started the other day, of DUM-E offering Tony a wrench.  With his robots, he loses that guarded look he tends to have with people, and Steve’s finding that harder to capture than he thought.

Whatever the engineer says in response is completely unintelligible, thanks to the screwdriver that’s appeared between his teeth, and Steve half-turns to face him, one eyebrow raised.  “Wanna try that again?”

Holding up a finger in a wordless “give me a sec”, Tony trades soldering iron for wrench, then spits the screwdriver out. “I said I’m working on the shoulder plates—those Servo Guards the other day were trying really hard to realign the armour.”

Steve just groans, and if it’s possible to infuse a tone with “headdesk”, he just did.  “There is something seriously wrong with that man.”

“Understatement of the year.”

“I thought his issue was with the Four, not, you know, all the rest of us.”

“Trust me, you’re not the only one,” Tony says drily. “And technically, it is, he just doesn’t seem to really give a damn about collateral damage. Which, well, villain, megalomaniac, etc.”

Then, to Steve’s surprise, Tony sets down his tools and drops his safety glasses on the bench before grabbing the plate and joining Steve at the table.  “What?” he says when Steve looks up and kind of stares.

“Uh, nothing.  I’m just trying to remember the last time I saw you sit down and actually _eat_ when you were in here.”

“Shut up,” Tony answers eloquently, and Steve grins.

As usual, Tony’s layered one of his band shirts over long sleeves—the workshop is cool enough to let him get away with it even in July—but this time Steve doesn’t recognise the name.  “I thought I’d heard of most of your bands at this point.  What do they play?”

About to take a bite of his sandwich, Tony pauses, blinking at him in confusion before he looks down.  Then he starts laughing hard enough that he has to put the plate down, and for a moment Steve thinks he’s going to topple right off his stool.  If the way DUM-E whirs at him and starts to approach is any indication, he’s not the only one. “Chronically Awesome is not a band,” he says when he can breathe enough to speak again, “though now that you mention it, it totally should be.  It was… kind of a gag gift to myself, I guess, or maybe a morbid one, whichever.”

Which is an odd statement even for Tony, especially in regard to a _shirt_ , and finally Steve gives up trying to parse that sentence.  “You lost me.”

“No, we found you.”

Steve throws his eraser at him.  “Tony…”

Rather than answer with the expected sarcastic dig, Tony hesitates, confusing Steve further.  “I know you’ve been trying to catch up on… life, I guess,” he says finally.  “You familiar with the idea of chronic illness?  Cystic fibrosis, fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis?”

Corners of his eyes crinkling in a smile, Steve points out, “You _have_ read my file, right?  We didn’t necessarily call it that, but it feels like I had half of the ones in the book. I probably could have _written_ the book.”

Tony inclines his head and lifts a hand in a teasing salute.  “Touché,” he acknowledges.  “Well, there’s kind of a thing with it—community, bitch session, whatever you want to call it.  Ergo.”  He waves again in the general direction of his shirt.  “Chronically ill turns into chronically awesome, and we make fun of ourselves on top of everyone who doesn’t get it.”

Steve can feel the confused frown developing on his face.  “But you’re…”

“Not sick?” Tony finishes for him, eyebrow raised, and Steve bites back the urge to wince.  When he hadn’t been in the middle of an asthma attack or a bout of pneumonia or whatever else, he’d just been short and skinny, and well-meaning people telling him he looked “fine” got his ire up; he should know better. “Technically no, since there’s no medical condition for ‘there’s shrapnel inching toward your heart repelled only by an electromagnet implanted in your chest’.  Doctors prefer more pithy diagnoses, and that kind of doesn’t qualify.”

“Okay,” Steve says slowly, drawing out the word to buy himself time to think.  “I get that it’s chronic in that it’s… _there_ all the time, but…”

The engineer has that exasperated look of someone who’s had the same conversation too many times before, and Steve can’t help but feel a little guilty. Before he can start apologising, though, Tony asks, “How much do you know about the whole thing with _Extremis_ and the Mandarin?”

Shaking his head, Steve says, “Honestly, not that much.  I know what hit the news, since that was kind of hard to miss, and I heard about Pepper, but…”

Tony bites at his lower lip, fingers drumming against the surface of the table like he’s trying to figure out how to phrase whatever comes next.  “I started having panic attacks after Manhattan,” he says at last, and whatever Steve had been expecting, that hadn’t even made the list.  “Something—stupid, nonsensical things, even—would remind me of falling through _nothing_ and thinking I was going to die that way, and it was like the air had been sucked out of the room and someone had hit me with an epi-pen.  You know that moment when you’re mostly asleep and all of a sudden you think you’re falling and you wake yourself up?”

Steve nods in wordless acknowledgement; he’s had his share of panic attacks since waking up in a world too new and seemingly too empty, and Tony’s description resonates with his own experiences like telepathy has suddenly manifested in one or both of them.  But he’s not about to interrupt now that Tony’s actually talking, so he stays silent.

“It was like that, except _all_ the time.”  Motioning toward his forearms, he explains, “I had developed prehensile tech for the suit, so I could literally call it to me from anywhere by way of subdermal implants.  Except the one night Pepper convinced me to actually _sleep_ , I called it in the middle of the night. It attacked her.”

Steve can feel his eyebrows rise of their own volition, and Tony’s mouth twists wryly.

“I know, no wonder we split, right?” Shrugging, he adds, “I thought I was having a heart attack the first couple times, even after JARVIS figured out it wasn’t a mechanical problem, which of course just meant more panic, and having panic attacks about having panic attacks is great, you should try it sometime.”

Tipping his head at him and deliberately ignoring the flip tone of voice, Steve understands intuitively that the heart attack itself isn’t the real problem; what he’s missing is why.  “For security reasons, even the SHIELD files don’t explain that this—”  Tony taps his forefinger against the arc reactor.  “—isn’t just keeping the shrapnel away from my heart, it’s also regulating pretty much my entire autonomic nervous system, which essentially makes it a pacemaker.  So if this fails, things like, oh, breathing stop being quite so automatic.”

Eyes widening, Steve opens his mouth, shuts it again, opens it, and gives up on trying to find a suitable response; again, Tony’s mouth does that bitter not-smile.  “C’mon, Cap, you didn’t think I switched to powering the suits with their own reactors because I thought it was fun to build three million of them, did you?”  He spreads his hands in a gesture that encompasses the rest of the workshop and the suits resting in the walls.  “If, say, Clint’s heart stops, we have the usual options—CPR, AED, what have you. If mine stops, I don’t really have that choice.  Either I replace the reactor core as fast as humanly possible—there’s only so long a human body can survive things like tachycardia, hypoxia, and on and on—or someone has to crack my chest open and do it manually.  Unless, that is, Thor can generate enough energy to resuscitate me instead of cooking me, or Bruce is already Hulked out and can just shout in my ear again.”

Steve winces involuntarily, can tell by the awkward look on Tony’s face that his own must look as horrified as he feels.

“I’m used to the reactor itself—the pain of it is background noise at this point, unless something weird _happens_.  But that was a different experience entirely.”

Pausing, Steve chews on that for a second. “I didn’t… I don’t know, I guess I didn’t think it bothered you.”

Tony raises an eyebrow, seemingly more amused than offended.  “I have a giant metal cylinder sitting in a hole in my sternum, Steve,” he points out, not unkindly.  “Since that blast sadly did not kill all my nerve endings—and let me tell you, there are days when I wish it had and think Congenital Insensitivity to Pain would be a fantastic idea—of _course_ I feel it.”

Again, Steve tips his head to the side, silently reassessing just about everything he knew about the other man. Genius he may be, but Tony bitches over scrapes and bruises and getting hit in the head and every other minor injury known to man, but he’s never complained about the reactor, or at least not where Steve can hear him.  Steve also has enough of a sense of self-preservation to only say that last part aloud.

In response, Tony simply shrugs yet again, looks away.  “There’s no point,” he explains after a moment, just when Steve’s beginning to think he’s crossed a line.  “I kvetch and moan over shit that can be _fixed_ , things that will heal.  This won’t. It’s easier on everyone else and safer for me if people think it’s just a part of me and I forget it’s there. Complaining nonstop about everything else turns out to be a great diversion.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, and this of all things is what makes Tony’s expression harden—it’s slight, a tightening around his eyes and mouth, but Steve notices all the same.

“Why?” he says, and this time his tone is sharper, bordering on acerbic.  “You’re not responsible for this.”

Holding out his hands in something resembling a placating gesture, Steve shakes his head, attempts to explain what he doesn’t entirely understand.  “No, that’s not what I meant.  I mean, yes, of course I’m sorry this happened to you, but I meant more that… I don’t know, that I’m sorry I— _we_ —didn’t notice. That we just… assumed.”

A beat; then Tony’s expression softens. “You weren’t supposed to.”

“I should have,” Steve counters, and if Tony notices that this time it’s “I” instead of “we”, he doesn’t comment.  Then he hesitates, debating the wisdom of his next question, and when he speaks, it’s a touch tentative.  “Will you—can I ask what it’s like, living with it that way? I’d like to understand it better, if you’re willing to explain.”

Tony’s answering look is long and searching, almost uncomfortably so; but Steve gets that he’s pushing into personal space, and with Tony Stark that’s tantamount to walking blind into a minefield. So he holds his gaze and hopes “I have no nefarious ulterior motives” is appearing in neon letters over his head.

“JARVIS, pull up the thing on spoon theory, would you?” Tony says abruptly, and a holo-screen appears nearly instantaneously in front of Steve’s face, just as he’s wondering what the hell kitchen utensils have to do with anything.

“Certainly, sir,” JARVIS replies. “I have emailed the link to Captain Rogers as well.”

“I love my brain sometimes,” Tony says to no one in particular, and Steve bites back a grin and a Skynet quip simultaneously (Tony is a bad influence; this is beside the point).  “Anyway.  Don’t read through this whole thing right now.  The gist is that ‘healthy’ people basically have unlimited resources, while people with chronic health issues start the day with a finite amount—the example just happened to be spoons, and it kind of stuck.”

Tapping his pencil against a blank corner of his sketchbook, Steve says, “So then, everyday things most people don’t think about, like… getting groceries, or doing laundry, take up resources for someone who’s chronically ill.”

Something like warmth slips into Tony’s eyes, the way it does when he’s impressed with you—not in the epiphany-inducing, scientific tangent sort of way, but rather the “I did not expect that” sort of way. “Yes, precisely. And at the end of a bad day, if you’ve only got one spoon left, you have to figure out what takes priority, like whether you’d rather eat something or take a shower before you crash.”

Dropping his face into his hands, Steve makes a sound that tries to be a laugh and a groan all at the same time.  Really he just ends up sounding like a dying whale.

“…What?”

“Sorry,” Steve says, waving a hand at the other man as he looks back up.  “I just can’t believe there’s a _name_ for that now.  I damn well could have used it when I was growing up.”

For the first time since they started talking about this, Tony laughs aloud, warm and real and understanding in a way no one had been when Steve was younger.  “Yeah, it’s a convenient metaphor.”

Steve pauses, hesitant again.  Yes, they’re becoming friends, levelling out after the Tesseract-induced first meeting on the Helicarrier, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t still walls and boundaries on both ends.  “And yet,” he says at last, “I’ve never heard you use it.”

“Again with the drawing attention to it,” Tony answers, gesturing back at his chest.  “And my situation’s a little different; the tech works well enough to mostly keep my body as close to ‘normal’ as medically possible.  It can’t do anything about pain levels, but it does drastically reduce the number of prescription meds I'd otherwise be on, and it keeps me from having to worry about most of the day-to-day cardiology-related things. Which isn’t to say I don’t worry about it constantly anyway, but now that I don’t have to carry around a palladium metre everywhere I go, it’s less… pervasive, I suppose. Mostly it’s a matter of whether a day or three has been bad enough to merit painkillers and locking myself out of the workshop, or something equivalent.  But I think the only time I’ve ever actually used this explicitly is when I need to convince Pepper I’m not just fucking around and there’s a real reason why I can’t—or shouldn’t—attend whatever event is in question.”

Slowly, Steve nods, thinking back to before the serum, when half the time his body flat out refused to do what he needed it to do, never mind what he _wanted_ it to do.  “That makes sense,” he says, just as slowly.  “I mean, you’re you, so I assume you know the kinds of treatments they used in the forties for anaemia and asthma and all the other stuff I had.”  Tony rolls his hand in an “of course, continue” sort of motion.  “There were good days, when I could get through the day and just be tired at the end of it. Then there were the days when getting up to walk across the room felt harder than running a marathon.”

“Exactly.”  Returning to the abandoned sandwich now that the Serious Discussion has stopped completely abrogating the conversation, Tony takes a bite like he’d been going to do ten minutes ago.  Then he stops again, glances at it, then back up at Steve. “Did you make this?” Steve nods.  “I have no idea what this is, but it’s awesome.”

“Thanks,” Steve says with a grin.

Tony takes another bite, then says, “Anyway. Point I was trying to make is, pain is pain.  It’s supposed to be a teaching tool, à la ‘don’t put your hand on a hot stove’, so we’re not exactly built to deal with pain as a constant.  But if it’s never going away and there’s nothing you can do about it, you either figure out how to deal, or you lose your mind and possibly jump off a bridge.  I wasn’t about to throw away the second chance a better man than me died for, so I got over it.” He pauses, amends, “Admittedly, waking up with a car battery attached to your chest kind of fucks with your perception of normal, but.”

Reaching over to steal the piece of tomato that’s fallen out of the sandwich, Steve thinks about that for a while, shifts his mental perception of Tony around again.  Granted, he’s been doing that on and off since Tony rode a nuke into space on a suicide mission, and even more since he appeared in Philly to fly him, Natasha, and Sam out to track Bucky down, but even so. “JARVIS must have been handy, with the biometrics you’ve got.”

Tony smiles, just a crinkling around his eyes and mouth.  “You’re thinking the biometrics came first,” he says.  “This—and especially the whole palladium poisoning, almost dying thing—is what pushed me to advance his biometric capacities. The suits I initially designed after Afghanistan had basic monitoring capabilities on the wearer, but most of it was directed toward the suit itself: energy depletion, HUD analysis, power distribution, weapon deployment, etc.  JARVIS was already running recognition for Tower security, but it was a slightly more standard gamut of measurements, like facial rec and retinal scans and palm prints.”

“So all the stuff you explained when I moved in, about monitoring heart rate and kinesiology and neural interfacing?”

“That all came later,” Tony nods. “I couldn’t tell anyone I was dying anymore than I was going to explain how much my body was dependent on the reactor, so that left JARVIS.  Once I had it developed and integrated into the suit, it made sense to implement it in the Tower; while at first it was mostly to figure out if and when I was going to keel over, it turned into a convenient security apparatus.”

“It was that bad?” Steve asks quietly, and it’s Tony’s turn to give him the confused head-tilt.

“I think the ‘you’ve read my file’ is my line now.”

Steve chuckles.  “I did, sort of—it was in the dossier they gave me after I woke up, but…” He shrugs, knowing Tony won’t exactly appreciate his next comment but not sure how else to proceed. “The longer I’ve known you, the more I’ve stopped taking that file at face value.”

For a moment Tony says nothing, leaving Steve wishing he could cancel out the silences.  “It was,” he replies.  “The only thing keeping me alive was killing me slowly, and I had no other options until Fury and Coulson showed up to dump a bunch of Howard’s old SHIELD files at my door and basically put me under house arrest until I figured it out.” He rakes a hand through his hair, takes another bite of his sandwich.  “Up to that point, though, I had a pretty nice fractal pattern radiating out from the reactor casing, and while chlorophyll could help keep the palladium at bay, the longer I had it in my system, I couldn’t have balanced it out even if I’d set up a permanent IV drip.  There are really only so many chlorophyll smoothies you can drink in a day.”

“That’s… thorough.”

Tony snorts in amusement.  “I’m a scientist.  It’s almost literally in my job description.”

“Still,” Steve says, then pauses as certain pieces fall into place.  “Is that why Bruce—”

“Is basically my doctor?  Yes.”

“That actually explains a lot.”

“He’s a better doc than most of the ones I know with the MDs after their names,” he responds.  “Plus he has the distinct advantage of not finding all our respective medical anomalies that confusing.”

“ _That’s_ why Fury threw us all together,” Steve says with a perfectly straight face.

“He _is_ a devious bastard,” Tony agrees just as solemnly, and then they both grin.

“Did you ever consider doing undercover work?” Steve asks after a moment, and Tony shoots him a quizzical look, though it’s an even bet whether he finds Steve’s tone or the question puzzling.

“Why in god’s name would I do that?”

A laugh forces its way past Steve’s throat of its own volition, bright and gently amused.  “You’re a far better liar than I thought,” he points out. “Maybe you wouldn’t make an operative of Natasha’s calibre, but you sure as hell make people see what you what them to see.”

Steve hadn’t thought it possible to shift your weight awkwardly when seated on a narrow stool, but apparently it is, because that’s exactly what Tony does, studiously avoiding his gaze.  “Self-preservation is a great thing, Cap,” he says, and this time Steve snorts, startling the engineer into looking up.

“You know I know you have three PhDs, right?” he reminds him drily.  “I may not have gone for a doctorate, but I’m pretty sure those had nothing to do with self-preservation, like I’m also sure you didn’t get them with the marks you did by drinking and sleeping your way through grad school.”

“No, I just slept through my classes,” Tony shoots back, but he’s doing that thing he does where he rubs the back of his neck, something Steve’s learnt to interpret as his “you’re complimenting me and I don’t know what to do about it, stop it” response.

Propping an elbow on the edge of the table, Steve grins.  “Your universities don’t seem to concur,” he says, then nudges Tony’s foot with his own. “I owe you an apology, though.”

“No, you don’t,” Tony responds, so quickly it has to be automatic.

“For underestimating you and buying everything SHIELD told me?  Yeah, I do.”

Tony shrugs again, still not meeting Steve’s eyes, and the soldier’s beginning to think he’s going to give himself a charlie horse if he keeps twitching his shoulders like that.  “You saw what I needed you to see,” he says, parroting Steve’s earlier words back at him.

Leaning forward, Steve reaches out to drop a hand on the other man’s shoulder.  “And dismissing your abilities beyond your IQ does what, exactly, for me or the team?”

Tony’s answering smile is bitter, filled with too much history for Steve to follow.  “You can’t fail when no one has expectations,” he says flatly, and Steve shakes his head.  This isn’t the type of conversation they have—ever—and he’s never been great at them anyway, but he knows better than to let it end there.

“I never said we didn’t have expectations,” he answers, tightening his grip for just a moment before letting go. “You just exceeded them.”

Rather predictably, Tony says nothing, and if he _was_ planning to respond Steve will never know, because JARVIS interjects into the pause with a polite, “Sir, Agent Coulson and Deputy Director Hill are on the line,” and the absurd thought, _Saved by the AI butler_ , flashes through Steve’s head.  “I’m told to tell you and the Captain that the lava people are requesting asylum again.”

One eyebrow shifting up, Tony shoots Steve a sidelong glance. “Seriously?”

“Evidently, sir.”

“Okay then.”  Pushing himself to his feet, Tony claps Steve on the shoulder. “Let’s go negotiate with the volcano guys.  Again.”

“You know,” Steve says, also standing as he shuts his sketchbook and leaves it on the table, “at one point this would have qualified as strange.”

A corner of his mouth quirks up, and Tony looks back over at him.  “What can I say, this job makes you lower your standards.”

Steve huffs out a laugh as they step into the elevator.  _You make me raise them_ , he thinks but doesn’t say. “No kidding,” is all he says aloud.  “I wonder who’s trying to kill them this time.” 

“…The ice people?” Tony suggests drily, and Steve tries unsuccessfully to keep from laughing.

Then the doors slide open fifteen floors up and they join the rest of the team in a conference room, where Phil’s present in person and Maria’s on a sat feed.  “What’ve we got?” Steve asks, and then it’s like any other day.

 

_Finis._

_Feedback is always appreciated._

**Author's Note:**

> Easter Egg: the lava people are a reference to the _Avengers Annual (2011)_ #1 "Pathfinder". I did not actually make them up.
> 
> Context & Canon: this is designed to work as a standalone fic. It is also technically a missing scene from a massive WIP with which I'm currently arguing. It may, therefore, help to know that this occurs after all currently released Marvel films and the presumed third _Captain America_ installation, but leans toward 616 more than MCU (e.g. the Fall of SHIELD has not happened, but Tony is still injured in Afghanistan rather than Vietnam). By the time this fic takes place, Pepper and Tony have been broken up for about two months, all of the Avengers are living in the Tower, and Phil Coulson is still their handler after the events of _The Avengers_. Once again, the Tony-Stark-related medical decision at the end of _Iron Man 3_ never happened as far as I am concerned.
> 
> If you are confused, curious, etc., feel free to ask.
> 
> Obligatory Disclaimer: I am not a doctor. This fic should not be taken as medical advice in lieu of seeking medical help. It is based on my personal experiences and those of some of my chronically ill friends, but symptoms, the manifestations thereof, and the responses to them vary from person to person.


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